Plasma boosters to enable access to space-as-a-service

The new space race is happening between companies, not countries.

A new alliance between two out-of-this-world companies could make commercial accessibility to space easier and cheaper. That's thanks in part to a technology called Hall-effect plasma thrusters.

Hall-effect plasma thrusters are a type of ion drive in which a propellant is accelerated by an electric field. The technology has been around since the 1960s, and Hall-effect thrusters were in use on Soviet satellites between 1972 and 1990.